“I merely propose to expostulate with you upon the unfortunate and ruinous course of life you have decided to pursue. No eremite of the Thebaid, or the Nitroon, is more completely immured than I find you; and the seclusion from society is quite as deleterious as the want of out-door air and sunshine. Your mind, debarred from communion with your race and denied novel and refreshing themes, centres in its own operations and creations, broods over threadbare topics until it has grown morbid; and, instead of deriving healthful nourishment from the world that surrounds it, exhausts and consumes itself, like fabled Araline, spinning its substance into filmy nothings.”
“Filmy nothings! Thank you. I flatter myself, when I am safely housed under marble, the world will place a different estimate upon some things I shall leave behind to challenge criticism.”
“How much value will public plaudits possess for ears sealed by death? Mrs. Gerome, you are too lonely; you must have companionship that will divert your thoughts.”
“Not I, indeed! All that I require, I have in abundance,—music, books, and my art. Here I am independent, for remember that he was a petted son of fame, who said, ‘Books are the true Elysian fields, where the spirits of the dead converse, and into these fields a mortal may venture unappalled. 217 What king’s court can boast such company,—what school of philosophy such wisdom?’ Verily if you had ever examined my library you would not imagine I lacked companionship. Why sir, yonder,—
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‘The old, dead authors throng me round about, And Elzevir’s gray ghosts from leathern graves look out.’ |
Count Oxenstiern spoke truly, when he declared, ‘Occupied with the great minds of antiquity, we are no longer annoyed by contemporaneous fools.’”
She rose and pointed to the handsome cases in the rear room, filled with choice volumes; and, while she stood with one arm resting on the easel, Dr. Grey looked searchingly at her.
To-day there was a spirituelle beauty in the white face that he had never seen before; and the large eloquent eyes were full of dreamy sunset radiance, unlike their wonted steely glitter. A change, vague and indefinable, but unmistakable, had certainly passed over that countenance since its owner came to reside at “Solitude,” and, instead of marring, had heightened its loveliness. The features were thinner, the cheeks had lost something of their pure oval moulding, and the delicate nostrils were almost transparent in their waxen curves; but the arch of the lip was softened and lowered, and the face was like that of some marble goddess on which mid-summer moonshine sleeps.
Her white mull robe was edged at the skirt and up the front with a rich border of blue morning-glories, and a blue cord and tassel girded it at her waist, while the broad braids of hair at the back of her head were looped and fastened with a ribbon of the same color. Her sleeves were gathered up to keep them clear of the paint on the palette, and the dimples were no longer visible in her arms. The ivory flesh was shrinking closer to the small bones, and the diaphanous hands were so thin that the sapphire asp glided almost off the slender finger around which it was coiled.
“Mrs. Gerome, you have lost twenty pounds of flesh within the last two months, and your extreme pallor alarms me.”